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I have talked a lot about the importance of alignment in my past newsletters and blog posts and how alignment creates focus, clarity, and accountability. But, the glue that holds alignment together throughout the year is...feedback.

I recently wrote a three-part series on reluctant new managers. One cause of reluctance that I wrote about was due to a fear of losing control (which often leads to a reluctance to delegate, hand over responsibilities, etc.).

I recently came across an article called When Teams Work Best by Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson and within their article they deal with a similar issue head on. And I quote: "The best way to manage your personal control needs as team leader is to demonstrate behaviors that share control.

Are your teams struggling and as a result costing your organization millions each year due to poor performance and low productivity, misaligned resources, and high levels of employee disengagement and turnover?

Does your team miss out on business opportunities as members engage in endless conflict, revisit decisions over and over again, and hoard resources within their silos?

“I never really thought about how we were so different,” said Jen. “Just looking at this helps me understand you much more effectively. For the past two years, I thought you didn’t like me, and now I recognize it has nothing to do with that.”

It is fatigue. It is low morale due to the way that people have been treated over the past year. It is the "doing more with less" that seems endless after a year or more of having to do more with less.

One of the most frustrating experiences people can have in the workplace is when there are unspoken expectations between a team member and a manager.

In a typical employment situation, certain expectations, such as salary, hours, and job duties, are clearly understood by both employer and employee. Other expectations, however, are so intimately linked to an individual’s concept of work that they often go unspoken or unacknowledged.